A typical database may contain hundreds if not thousands of entities. Such entities may relate to other entities in a myriad of ways. If users want to perform queries on such entities, for instance, to look up certain attributes associated with the entities, they may perform a database search that will result in a report. Such a report, moreover, may have a myriad of data elements as a result of the queries. However, if the report does not reflect exactly the contents of the intended queries or results the users hoped for, the queries may have to be performed again. Alternatively, the reports themselves may be further probed in order to arrive at the desired result—for example, by writing complex algorithms to capture the result.
Ad-hoc reports are an excellent way to empower end users to get exactly the information they may need or want. However, ad-hoc reports typically suffer from a lack of interactivity. Analytical views, on the other hand, may provide rich interactivity, but suffer from a lack of flexibility to get exactly the data needed (without involving a technical designer to modify the database model that underlies the views). Thus, to emulate the interactivity of analytical views and to provide the data honing ability of ad-hoc reports, it would be advantageous to provide mechanisms that allow for rich interactivity and flexibility when a user creates an ad-hoc report.